Cuap. X. CAPTIVE CHILDREN. 275 
Ega are the Juris and the Passés: these are now, however, nearly 
extinct, a few families only remaining on the banks of the retired creeks 
connected with the Teffé, and on other branch rivers between the Teffé 
and the Jutahi. They are a peaceable, gentle, and industrious people, 
devoted to agriculture and fishing, and have always been friendly to the 
whites. I shall have occasion to speak again of the Passés, who are a 
slenderly-built and superior race of Indians, distinguished by a large 
square tattooed patch in the middle of their faces. The principal cause 
of their decay in numbers seems to be a disease which always appears 
amongst them when a village is visited by people from the civilised 
settlements—a slow fever, accompanied by the symptoms of a common 
cold, ‘“ defluxo,” as the Brazilians term it, ending probably in consump- 
tion. The disorder has been known to break out when the visitors 
were entirely free from it; the simple contact of civilised men, in some 
mysterious way, being sufficient to create it. It is generally fatal to the 
Juris and Passés: the first question the poor patient Indians now put to 
an advancing canoe is, ‘‘ Do you bring defluxo ?” 
My assistant José, in the last year of my residence at Ega, “ resgatou” 
(ransomed, the euphemism in use for purchased) two Indian children, 
a boy and a girl, through a Japura trader. The boy was about twelve 
years of age, and of an unusually dark colour of skin; he had, in fact, 
the tint of a Cafuzo, the offspring of Indian and negro. It was 
thought he had belonged to some perfectly wild and houseless tribe, 
similar to the Pardraudtes of the Tapajos, of which there are several 
in different parts of the interior of South America. His face was of 
regular, oval shape, but his glistening black eyes had a wary, distrustful 
expression, like that of a wild animal ; and his hands and feet were small 
and delicately formed. Soon after his arrival, finding that none of the 
Indian boys and girls in the houses of our neighbours understood his 
language, he became sulky and reserved ; not a word could be got from 
him until many weeks afterwards, when he suddenly broke out with 
complete phrases of Portuguese. He was ill of swollen liver and 
spleen, the result of intermittent fever, for a long time after coming 
into our hands. We found it difficult to cure him, owing to his almost 
invincible habit of eating earth, baked clay, pitch, wax, and other 
similar substances. Very many children on the upper parts of the 
Amazons have this strange habit; not only Indians, but negroes and 
whites. It is not, therefore, peculiar to the famous Otomacs of the 
Orinoco, described by Humboldt, or to Indians at all, and seems to 
originate in a morbid craving, the result of a meagre diet of fish, wild- 
fruits, and mandioca meal. We gave our little savage the name of 
Sebastian. The use of these Indian children is to fill water-jars from 
the river, gather firewood in the forest, cook, assist in paddling the 
montaria in excursions, and so forth. Sebastian was often my com- 
panion in the woods, where he was very useful in finding the small birds 
I shot, which sometimes fell in the thickets amongst confused masses 
of fallen branches and dead leaves. He was wonderfully expert at 
catching lizards with his hands, and at climbing. The smoothest stems 
of palm-trees offered little difficulty to him: he would gather a few 
lengths of tough flexible lianas; tie them in a short endless band to 
